Friday, 8 January 2010

I haven't updated in ages so I mauled jamie jones' scanner to try and catch up.

Flourescent Lighting is something I've been workin on in developing my final outcome: a study of silhouettes, and silhouettes can leave and impression and ultimately define how something is perceived. I wanted to explore the powerful and sometimes disorienting effect of intense black-and-white contrast - hoping to suggest the flickering of the fluorescent lighting every locale in my everyday life is illuminated by. silhouettes are essentially a contrast in their surroundings created by the shape of whoever casts it; ultimately, a mark of a person's visual impact.

what's interesting is how altering one's silhouette changes the impact they make, and thus how they are perceived. only the naked, shaven body can cast a 'real' silhouette. everything else - clothes, hats, hairstyles - ultimately affects how the person is defined.

the altered silhouette, I find, is a symbol of artifice - a conscious move to affect how one is perceived. I compare this artifice with the idea of truth and lies, fantasy and reality.

I found myself looking at drugs culture as a symbol of artifice - using drugs being to immerse oneself in an artificial mindset, a chemically-altered state of being where one's fears, insecurities and worries are minimal, or even nonexistent - and as I found myself at party after party, I thought about how my drawings could resemble fevered thoughts, rambling conversations - and the kind of scrap doodles you might find passed around for fun at a sesh.

with the contrast created by black and white I aim to suggest that feeling of being in a room lit by a fluorescent light that's flickering just enough for you to notice, but not enough to focus on, and that weird little confused tension you feel under it.